Читать книгу Greece - J. A. M'Clymont - Страница 4

THE ACROPOLIS FROM THE SITE OF THE TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS

The two detached colossal columns belong to the west end of the southern peristyle of the Temple. To the right is the Arch of Hadrian. The striking form of the masses of rock, which constitute the natural defence of the Acropolis on its eastern side, shows with great effect in this drawing.

mind, that the shorter the pedigree the more honour it conferred upon its living representative. The public genealogies were thus an incentive both to the piety and the pride of the more influential classes, and they help to account for the reverence in which the ancient mythology was so long held by such an enlightened nation as the Greeks.

With the exception of Palestine, there is probably no country that can compare with Greece for the influence it has exerted on the life and thought of the world, in proportion to its size and population. In area it was never so large as Scotland, and its population, which is now under two millions and a half, was probably never much greater.

How far the influence of ancient Greece was due to the racial characteristics of its inhabitants, which they brought with them from other parts of the world, and how far to the peculiarities of the country itself, is a question which it is not easy to determine. To some extent, no doubt, both causes operated. The inhabitants belonged to a good stock, the Indo-Germanic, while their geographical position and surroundings were well fitted to develop a high type of manhood. The beauty of the scenery, the purity of the atmosphere, the geniality of the climate, the fertility of the plains and valleys, the grandeur of the mountains,—more numerous and widespread than in any other part of Europe of similar extent except Montenegro,—the bracing influence of the sea, and the commercial advantages afforded by its coasts, which are more extensive than those of any other country in proportion to its size, looking in the direction of Europe, Asia, and Africa—all these things no doubt helped to make the ancient Greeks the great nation that they were, though their comparative obscurity in modern times shows that something more is needed to produce a similar effect.

If we would form an adequate conception of the nation’s influence, we must take into account the numerous Greek colonies which were planted in Asia Minor and on the southern shore of the Black Sea, on the coast of Macedonia, along the Hellespont and Bosporus, and also in Sicily and Italy, where a new Greek world sprang up, which received the name of Magna Græcia. Hundreds of years before Athens reached the height of its glory, there was a Greek city in Italy, Cumæ (founded by colonists from Chalcis and Cymæ in Asia Minor), which held the first place in the peninsula for wealth and civilisation; while another Greek settlement was to be found as far west as Marseilles, which had been colonised from Phocæa in Asia Minor about 600 B.C.

The inhabitants of Greece in this wider sense not only spoke the same language (whose preservation was largely due to the influence of Homer), but were also bound together by fellowship in blood, in religion, and in manners. They were hardly more distinguishable from the rude and ignorant tribes of Europe than from the more civilised Orientals who practised human sacrifice, polygamy, and the mutilation of enemies. But perhaps the most marked characteristic of the Greeks was their love of local autonomy, and their rooted aversion to anything like imperial rule, such as prevailed so widely in Asia. Their attachment to an individual city, as the capital of a small district, was doubtless due in great measure to the divided nature of the country, which is broken up by mountains and rivers and arms of the sea into numberless plains and valleys only a few miles in extent. While this had the effect of fostering a spirit of independence, combined with a sense of civic obligation, which helped to develop the energies and capacities of the individual, the proximity to each other of so many rival states bred a great amount of jealousy and strife, which frequently led to bloody and destructive wars. Such disintegrating tendencies were too much even for the consolidating force of a common language and literature, or of voluntary confederations for the purpose of worship or amusement. Occasionally a great national emergency, such as the Persian invasion, might force the Greeks to join together for the resistance of a common foe, but it was almost inevitable that sooner or later they should fall into the hands of a great military power, such as Macedonia, and lose the civic liberties of which they were so proud. The political decay of Greece, however, only widened the scope of its influence. As the dissolution of the Jewish polity was followed by the rapid spread of a religion which had its roots in the Jewish Scriptures, so the national degradation of the Greeks led to a still wider diffusion of their language, their literature, and their civilisation.